same sense as he gave her a tight, emotionless hug. “Cara, how are you holding up? You must be losing your mind.”
While Cara distracted him, Hunter motioned urgently for Harper to go out the open door. Clearly, none of them wanted the manager to figure out that they’d invited a reporter into their house.
“We don’t know what to do,” Cara was saying as Harper slipped outside. “The police are useless.”
“Don’t worry,” Stuart assured her, something threatening in his tone. “I’m here now. I’ll get their asses in gear.”
It was the last thing Harper heard before Hunter closed the door.
8
When Harper walked into the Savannah police headquarters later that afternoon, the first thing she noticed was that it was colder inside than it was outside. Darlene, the daytime desk officer, wore a coat over her dark blue uniform.
“What’s going on?” Harper asked, looking up at the air vents. “It’s freezing.”
Darlene gave her a gloomy look. “The air conditioner’s blowing instead of the heating and nobody can get it to turn off. Thank God it’s Friday, is all I can say. I can’t wait to get out of this crazy place.”
Without waiting to be asked, she slid a binder containing the day’s crime reports across the desk. “Supposed to work in a snowstorm, I guess,” she grumbled.
Harper, her mind still on the Xavier Rayne story, flipped disinterestedly through the pages. Burglary, burglary, burglary, larceny, assault, burglary. Nothing newsworthy except a minor stabbing.
Finishing in record time, she handed the binder back across. “I wanted to grab the lieutenant for a second. Is he in?”
Instead of answering, Darlene leaned one elbow on the counter. “You and the lieutenant are getting to be regular friends now.” She lifted one eyebrow suggestively.
“Oh, come on. The man hates me like a burning sensation in his nether regions,” Harper said, horrified. “I just need to consult with him about a story.”
“Maybe.” Darlene, who loved gossip more than air, didn’t reach for the phone. “Seems to me y’all are getting along better than you used to at least. It’s nice. That’s all.”
“Darlene.” Harper gave her a stern look.
“I’m calling him.” Smiling, the desk officer picked up the receiver and dialed three numbers. When Blazer answered, she used her sweetest voice. “Lieutenant, Harper McClain would like to speak with you. Can I send her back? Thank you.” As she hung up, she gave Harper a pleased look. “He says come on back. Didn’t even ask what you wanted.”
Ignoring the insinuation, Harper crossed to the security door leading to the back offices. Darlene hit the button that unlocked the door with a shrill warning buzz.
Beyond the door the narrow hallway was busy with officers, detectives, dispatchers, and support staff. Harper weaved through them, nodding to familiar faces. She knew this building even better than the newspaper offices. In some ways she’d grown up here.
After her mother was murdered, when Harper was twelve, the detective on the case had taken her under his wing. Somehow he’d known there was no one else to pick up the pieces of her life and he’d stepped into that role as if it were a perfectly natural thing for a homicide detective to do.
She’d stayed close with Lieutenant Robert Smith all her life—even after she became a reporter and found herself at odds with him from time to time. They’d made it work.
But that all fell apart eighteen months ago when Smith murdered a woman he’d been having an affair with. He was now serving life in prison. For months after his arrest, she’d found these halls unwelcoming and foreign. Gradually, though, she was beginning to feel at home again in the long corridors and small, windowless offices. The faint smell of dust and bleach that seemed to permeate the brick comforted her the way baking cookies might make an ordinary person feel happy.
Lieutenant Larry Blazer, though, had never been part of that feeling for her. He hadn’t approved of Smith’s decision to become so close to her, and he’d never trusted her as a reporter. They grated on each other’s nerves. Still, Darlene wasn’t wrong. Lately, Harper was figuring out how to work with him now that he was head of the homicide unit. And he was learning to trust her, just a little bit.
His office was the last on the hallway. Harper tapped her knuckles against the frosted window where his name was painted in glossy black.
“Enter.” He fired the word like a gunshot.
When she walked in, the lieutenant sat at the blond-wood table